Every year, KIVI NIRIA's Vehicle Engineering Department awards the Spyker Prize for the best graduation theses in the field of vehicle engineering in the Netherlands. The prize is named after the illustrious Dutch car brand from the first quarter of the last century, which has found a spectacular successor in the new Spyker. The Spyker Prize has an HBO and a WO version.
This time, the award ceremony took place at the automotive museum "AutomusA" in Bergeijk on 17 November, combined with the Spyker Lecture, the annual keynote speech in the field of automotive technology development. The lecture "Research challenges of the European automotive industry" was delivered by Arnold van Zyl, director of EUCAR. This organisation coordinates pre-competitive research of European car manufacturers in areas of common interest.
Mr van Zyl addressed the importance of this type of research. The automotive industry is the largest investor in R&D in Europe. It has been found that manufacturers that invest relatively the most in R&D achieve the highest profit margins. This also stimulates R&D investment among suppliers of services and products (as in the Netherlands), necessary to maintain a good competitive position. The automotive industry's research is largely driven by the major challenges regarding environmental impacts (sustainability) and traffic safety. Here it is more and more necessary to take a systems approach. Mr van Zyl then gave an overview of technology areas and topics of joint industry research. Finally, he took a brief look at the theses nominated for the Spyker Prize, concluding that they fitted in well with the automotive R&D focus areas.

This was followed by the presentation of the Spyker Prize. From a total of 10 theses submitted by the universities, the expert jury, led by Peter van der Koogh, nominated two HBO theses and three WO theses. The prize winners eventually turned out to be: Koos van der Spaan and Berny Verhagen with their thesis "Analyse der globalen dynamischen Struktursteifigkeit von Fahrzeugen an hand der experimentellen Modalanalyse" (HAN - Automotive Engineering) and Roderick Rodenburg with "Development of a Generic Vehicle Modelling Procedure for Compatibility Research" (TU Eindhoven - Mechanical Engineering). The winners received a handsome certificate and cash prize from chairman Hans Driever. All nominees also received a year's free membership of KIVI NIRIA and the fine book "Gallery of dreams" about historic cars. A nice bonus was that the prize winners were offered one month's internship by Mr Van Zyl at ERTICO, the European ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) organisation of which he will soon be CEO.

Description

Spyker lecture and presentation spyker prize 2005

Location

AutomusA, Standardmolen 3, Bergeijk

Organiser

Vehicle Technology

Congress Bureau KIVI NIRIA